Ella Meter-um Voduthu, Amma katchi valukkuthu - Auto meters are running in Chennai. I'm voting for Amma.

I am a Chennai-ite, and this has always meant dealing with auto drivers who are supremely dismissive of their customers, and us getting rides always depended on the rare occurrences of their condescension. This hate-hate relationship of customers with auto drivers was spawned by the drivers being encouraged in their exhortative behaviour by political goondas who owned and rented out thousands of auto-rickshaws.

One of my earliest memories (80’s) is of my father fighting with an auto-driver who agreed to go from Ayanavaram to Shanti Colony (Anna Nagar East) for 10 rupees, but demanded twelve rupees when we were halfway through, near ICF. My father, a man of principle, was unskilled in bargaining but very skilled at getting himself riled up, made the driver stop, paid him a full ten rupees for the half distance and walked my mother and carried me the rest of the way in the hot sun. No experience with auto drivers since has made me change my opinion of them as greedy and always bargain for more than the set kilometer rate, since then. 

But, these days my auto rides in Chennai are accompanied by a sense of surreal and furtive joy that feels like it will be snatched away any moment and I snap back out of my dream into reality where auto fares are back to normal. (Normal = exorbitant, see?). In fact I think that this ‘fair pricing’ won’t last and in fact, can’t last, because it is too good to be true. I walk away from an auto after having paid exactly 32 rupees according to the meter and I wasn't abused in face-turns-blue language and rage? Did the driver just nod politely and proceeded to bend down to start the engine? What the hell has happened to real life and more importantly, can this wonderfulness continue at all?

In an aside - Is that a vague sense of guilt I feel when I pay the price on the meter, like I have cheated the auto driver of his deserved extra (for which they usually work hard by arguing and playing a great game of negotiation) money?

Thanks to Amma, our own puratchithalaivi Ms.J.J, we pay what fair prices for auto rides as of the last one-two months, and the disbeliever that I am, I don’t think this will last. Regime change will happen, because while for me this is a change/difference big enough to re-vote her into office, it is not for a lot of people. Or the RTO offficers that are hounding these auto-wallas if they spot one without a re-calibrated meter now because of pressure from their bosses who are under pressure from Amma, will soon lose steam, because that is what normally happens, and slowly the meters will go into disuse and the earlier negotiation system will come back into force again. And normalcy will return. 

Fair and?

It is hard being a girl in this day and age. I tell you, our mothers did not have this kind of pressure. At least in South India of the 70's and 80's when my mother was roaming about breaking young men's hearts (Not that I am, mind you. Am too old to do that, I like to tell myself, and stifle the vanity before it can assert itself and say that I could if i wanted to. In conclusion, I am not breaking any young guy's heart. At least, not intentionally.), she did not spend a fortune on moisturisers, or deodorants or conditioners. All she knew was red lipstick and perfume, and that too, only for important occasions. They did have one major expense, I must concede. Talcum powder, which was a big deal those days. Lily of the valley, I think was the fancy face powder they used, and kajal, for drawing out the length of their eyes (Hema malini and other actresses , of the 'tightly wrapped sari with short pallu' period, come to mind, when I see college pictures of my mother and her friends). But what is one cosmetic item compared to everything that a girl these days has to have on her dresser?


Hair must be straight and shiny( shampoo, conditioner, anti-fritzer, mousse, gel, you name it, and among the 5 girls in my apartment, we would have at least two variants of each product). Arms, legs and all exposed body parts tweezed, shaved, or femmed out. Face moisturised/sun screened/sun blocked, eyebrows neat, eyes highlighted. (In this day and age, you have to look good, or the big nasty happens. A prettier, younger model replaces you. It is funny really, when a seventeen year old uses more products than a twenty five year old.) When does this insecurity start? And how do you deal with it? Or worse, make sure your own daughter in the future does not fall prey to this ultimate self doubt of "Will I ever look good eneough?"

I recently saw an advert for a soap manufactured by the big bad cancer conglomerate, where, in a medical college, a girl student suddenly discovers that she has a voice, because she started using the beauty soap. A medical student, of all things. Doesnt matter that she is going to be a doctor and save lives, but that she needs a soap to give her opinions about where the class goes for a vacation. "Azhagu namma kaila thaan irukku", goes the tag line. I felt nauseated. Every 'Fair and lovely' advert I had ever seen came to mind. Everything preying on young chicks' insecure psyches. I have an aunt, who has really dark skin, who has been using fair and lovely since I was five. I was five and I knew what it was. And, she looks exactly as she did twenty years ago. Not even a millionth fraction of a shade (That graded paper they give you so lovingly with some of those products to compare with your skin ????Urghhh!) different.

And all those chemicals are really bad for you. And if you are preggers, no, no.

Now, why did I start on this? Do I have a big solution? No, I don't. But I do know that every time I wear eye-liner on a work day, to boost my monday morning blues, or get that particular -stubbornly resisting my charms- guy to notice my eyes, I would stop for a second, and re-asses. I am not saying I would give up smelling nice and fresh, or my smooth hair for a frizzy, uncontrollable mess. But that extra time that goes to figuring out how to look different for the day, could definetly be used for a few more moments of sleep, or finishing up that adrenalin spiking car chase sequence on that Andy McDermot novel, or horror of horrors (as my really cool Theory of Communication professor, who makes for many interesting stories, would say) spent writing home assignments for my Management process teacher (Who probably was a pre-school teacher before she got the misfortune to land at our B-school. Yes, she gives us home-assignments, and checks if we have written them. Every class.)

So, after that rambling, I just want to say that - If you use a lot of chemicals on your face and body on a regular basis. Stop! Think! How much of it do you really need?